Tuesday, February 26, 2013

The Great Outdoors: Fence Addition Edition

Do y'all realize that we'll set our clocks forward in two weeks? That makes me more excited than that one time Chris brought me home a Kinder chocolate bar and my toothy smile knocked my eyes across each other for four whole days. And you'd think i'd be like, "Aw man, one hour less of sleep," but i've got kids so that one hour means dick to me; i've functioned on way less. I'ma do things with that one extra hour of sunlight. I'MA DO THINGS.

Like, yardwork, for example. I love doing yardwork. It's something that stays, you know what i mean? If i clean inside, i give it one hour until the kids rip it to shreds and i have to try to talk myself out of hanging from a doorknob. But outside? What're they gonna do? Throw dirt on it? Please.

Normally i like to do yardwork alone so i can punish Chris for getting full nights of sleep while i was up with the babies by making him stay inside and listen to my oldest ask him why he's not Momma. So i'm glad we got the big outdoor structures out of the way before we had kids so Chris could work his magic out there (i recognize fantastic talent when i'm married to it). Because it if were up to just me to build a fence, I'd just set up parking cones and call it good.

Onward. Before the kitchen overhaul(s), before the bathrooms, before everything except for the 67 gallons of paint that are holding this house up, there was the fence. Ah, memories...

Take a look into our backyard when we first bought the place:

Things to take away from this pic: No fence, no patio, deck made of shit, drainage cutting through yard

And here's the side of the house. We're very lucky to have an end-unit and thus a side yard.

Not pictured: My brother and i had previously removed an evergreen tree that reached up to 3/4 the house height and gutted out the ridiculous amounts of groundcover that was against the house and extended all the way out to where you see the dirt/grass line.

The first step was to gather the wood.

The second step was the dig the post holes. We did rent a post hole digger, but it kept getting caught on enormous underground boulders/dinosaur bones making it more trouble than it was worth. So, digging by hand it was. This is me at my best wearing Chris' shorts and a wife beater. Please invite me to your wedding.

See that shovel? Shortly after this pic was taken, i stepped into a hole with my right leg while my left leg buckled underneath me to land on the sharp edge of that shovel. It cut to the bone, and instead of stitches, we just put a bandaid and some Neosporin on it. You should see the scar. And no, i'm not selling the rights to that story. It's all mine.

After building up the yard & moving the drainage over, we started to frame out the fence.

Then, board-on-board, we put it together.

(Those bushes on the left are no longer there.)

Derek Zoolander made an appearance.

And here's a shot from around the side of the house. That's a lot of clay. That clay cray.

Now that we have the fence up and we just need to cap it all off, I feel comfortable showing you comparison pictures.

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The tree on the right has since been lined and mulched, and a small trellis now holds the Columbine.

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We mulched since this part of the yard gets trampled a lot and it's hard to grow grass in the shade.